1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a GI type optical fiber (hereinafter sometimes referred to simply as “optical fiber”) and a method for manufacturing the same, and more particularly relates to a GI type optical fiber whose core component is a polymer of a monomer whose predominant component is chlorostyrene having high transparency, and to a method for manufacturing this fiber.
2. Background Art
Copper wire has been used in the past for the link systems of video-related devices, but as the quantity of information increases, there is more noise with a copper wire, and this has necessitated excessive countermeasures aimed at reducing noise. In particular, television broadcasts, wired broadcasts, and video recording media have transitioned to high definition in recent years, and therefore optical fibers have come to be used for the link systems of video-related devices, and advantage of which is that there is no need for noise countermeasures.
In view of this, an optical transmission apparatus and optical communications module featuring optical wiring have been proposed, for example (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2008-10837, for instance). It is stated here that quartz glass fiber, polymer cladding fiber, or plastic fiber is used as the optical wiring.
However, because of the large allowable bending radius of such fibers, very fine wiring is impossible, making it difficult to wire inside the narrow spaces between video devices or inside smaller video devices.
Also known as a plastic fiber is an optical fiber in which the core is made of polymethyl methacrylate or another such methacrylic resin (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application H8-106017, for example). Such plastic optical fibers have numerous advantages, such as having good flexibility, being lightweight, being easy to work, allowing easy manufacture of a large diameter fiber and allowing low cost manufacture.
In light of this situation, plastic fibers with good bending resistance continue to be utilized in the link systems of video-related devices, so in addition to bending resistance, there are expected to be further advances in the bandwidth and transmission performance (that is, loss reduction) in plastic fibers, and satisfying all these requirements is something that is eagerly anticipated.